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Simpson's Cast On Bravo This Sunday
droopus writes "So, what does Dan Castelleneta look like? (He's a kinda weasly looking bald guy.) See Dan, Hank, Harry, Yeardley, Julie, Nancy and the rest of the Simpsons cast this Sunday at 8PM (EST) on Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo.
According to the website:
"In anticipation of the landmark 300th episode of The Simpsons, James Lipton sat down with the series' accomplished ensemble to meet the actors behind the voices in order to discover how they have managed to create such a wealth of believable and beloved characters."
I saw a quick preview, and seeing that thin, weasly bald guy go "Aggggggh, donut" was alsolutely hilarious. Watching Nancy Cartwright morph effortlessly from Bart, to Nelson, to Ralph is waaaaay cool. My TiVo is set for this one.
One hitch: it's on at the same time as the usual new Sunday Simpsons episode, so Bravo has thoughtfully repeated the show at midnight so fans can record both."
I wonder if any of the writers will be on the show too. Most of the success has relied on excelelent writing. I think this is the first time ever the voice actors have been allowed to do their characters on a television show other than the cartoon itself. James Lipton sure knows how to negotiate for his guests!
Oh, that's exactly why I enjoy watching him...I find it hilarious to see Lipton saying things like "your performance in That Famous Movie was absolutely awe-inspiring" while ignoring true interviewing opportunities, such as when Jack Lemmon admitted to having been an alcoholic at the same time he portrayed one. Lipton just stared blankly at him, and changed the subject after the ackward silence.
Could be worse...he could have made the whole interview about that, and then advertise it as "Jack Lemmon tells his deep, darkest secrets"
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Is she the one who's a member of a criminal nut cult?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Umm Microsofts Ultimate TV can handle two streams, so with it you could record two shows at one. I believe it's the only system to offer this in their first version. Perhaps Tivo will have it in their next?
I believe the DirectTivo variant has had two tuners for a while. Since the dish receiver and Tivo are in the same unit, it made a lot of sense to go ahead and throw in a second tuner.
For a stand-alone unit, this is a bit more difficult. My (now dead, first Philips version) Tivo didn't even have *a* tuner, unless you count tuning in channel 3 or 4 for the RF input. But even so, and even with two, only one could be your cable box/dish receiver, the other could potentially be an antenna or (non-pay channel) cable input... though certainly possible.
My next PVR will most likely be a DirectTV w/Tivo built-in for just this type of reason (plus just being able to channel surf while something else is recording would be nice).
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Send a digital cable signal straight into your computer and dump the raw data on your hard disk, then play it back through a tv tuner. You can play it back as many times as you want to grab whatever channel(s) you want.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Of course Nancy Cartwright has no trouble shifting between different characters. According to her religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcult, she's infested with the souls of dead people & aliens, many of whom were blown up 75 billion years ago by the Galactic Overlord Xenu in volcanoes by H-bombs.
Because of this, and other dirty deeds done by the cult of $cientology, I personally boycott The Simpsons, JAG, Dharma & Greg, South Park, and other TV shows and movies that employ $cientologists. (And yes, my local affiliates and the networks know why I don't watch their shows!)
That, and I don't believe we even have any existing technology to simply capture a collection of mixed radio signals and somehow (digitally or analog) store them...
;-) ) Real drives are of course smaller and many people have more then 70 channels.
Sounds like what radio telescopes do, and what SETI@Home analyses.
That said, the bandwidth is obscene (as you mentioned), the TiVo hasn't got the processor power to handle that much data (even the lowest scale cable subscription). I didn't do the calculations but I'm pretty confident that even if the TiVo did have the processor power, the hard drive would not be able to write more then five or ten channel's data at a time. And even if it could, the amount of data would overwhelm even a hacked TiVo with a hypothetical terabyte of hard drive space. (I don't think they've been hacked that high but I could be wrong.)
Guestimate such a drive at a thousand hours (1 Hr. = 1GB or so; it's not perfect but who cares?) and call the cable subscription about 70 channels at the least (that's what I get here w/ Basic Only), and you're looking at a whole 14 hours of storage. (Coincidentally that's how much my 1st-gen TiVo stores of just one channel...
You could certainly build a machine capable of doing this but I'm guestimating you're getting into the tens of thousands of dollars to aquire the processor power and the massive RAID-like array needed to compress the stream to a decent size, not to mention the price of the memory bus that can move that much data around. Again, radio telescopes do this stuff so I know it must exist somewhere... but if it's rare enough, the fees associated with the fact that it's a custom solution every time could start pushing you into the hundreds of thousands or millions+ to build a box that just eats the cable signals and stores some decent amount.
(You can shuffle some of the cost by changing the specs of the system, such as needing less processor power if you don't compress, but then you need to spend more on the drive array to up the throughput. If you're on a DirecTV service, all the data is already compressed but you're still going to spend a lot of money on that drive array.)
In conclusion, do not hold your breath expecting to see this in consumer electronics anytime soon.
I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that in their contracts, it restricts them from doing the character voices in public or on something televised. There was an episdoe of LA Law where Dan Castelleneta plays a character who works at an amusement park as Homer Simpson. Throughout the show you hear the Homer voice but only when he's in the costume. I thought that was a way of getting around their restriction in their contracts.
Anyone know if they actually had to get permission to do the voices for this ep of actors studio?
I happened to be on the sreet on opening night and was witness to what followed. There was a large rent-a-crowd of local Scientologists gathered in front of a stage setup on the street, with many more inside the theater they had rented for the evening, in addition the street was packed with the usual Friday night revelers who where all totally perplexed. All of a sudden the loudspeaker came on, and Bart Simpson's voice blared out "Hello, Sydney!" The the video hookup from inside went live and she appeared on the screen, welcoming everyone to the opening. Shortly after Kate Cebrano (tubby Aussie songstress and devout Scientologist) came on stage to annouce the big opening, blah blah blah to the bafflment of the most non-Scio crowd present, then she and the tuxedo wearing tanned yank Scio out from head office began the countdown to the "grand opening". Drums rolled, they hit one - I should mention at this point thaty it had been raining - nothing happend. these two fuckwits are standing on a damp stage in front of what looks like a two story paper mache science project while the only sound is the passing traffic and the noise of hundreds of cinema goes trying to push through the crowds of the faithful to get to their movies. After much running around, swearing and thumping the pyro guys get TWO roman candles to sputter to life as Cebrano and captain Dickhead from LA clap and go "woo.", and the local devotees clap wildly on queue. You know, with so may OT-III's and above present I'd have thought their Thetans could have put on a better lightshow - but what the fuck do I know, right?
Anyway, the point is: Nancy, you got busted going "Bart" to promote your "Church". Betcha thought no-one stateside would ever find out, huh?
Morons...
Add to this the incident where pranksters broke into the projector room and projected porn on to the big screen. It attracted a small crowd and stopped traffic on George St. The cops had to break into the room again to stop the projector.
I never knew that it was a Scieno propaganda tool but now that I think about it the volcano makes sense. The only time I saw something on the screen was the banner advertising Dianetics strapped over it when the screen stopped working.
--- if y cn rd ths y cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmmng!
Last year Dan/Homer introduced Paul Krassner at a speaking engagement in LA. Krassner wanted to put it on an album but after reviewing the material, Fox declined. They don't seem to restrict him from posting it on his web site. Check it out. Unfortunately it is in Real. You'd think Krassner would distribute it in Ogg Vorbis.
I thought they reported this here, but a cursory
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin